Monetary Value of My Senses, Part Two: Smell & Taste
Okay okay smell is the weak sister of the five main senses. I am sure that if you asked people which of their five senses they would lose if they had to get rid of one, half would choose smell. (The other half would dispute the premise of the question and get mad when you tried to make them to choose anyway.)
In general I agree. Smell is not too useful unless you have a job designing perfume which all smells like musk anyway or maybe you are a bloodhound. I'm grouping it with taste here because everyone knows that smell and taste and closely linked (though not as close as everyone thinks). Also both installments would be pretty thin if I did them separately.
1) Pheromone detection. Yes noses do this with a special organ that you can see if you have a flashlight and at least two mirrors and three hands. I have to confess I do not know what the value of pheromones is. I am pretty sure they are a big hoax put out by the perfume companies. Even if they are not I am not sure how well they work. I don't seem to myself like a very pheromonal person. I would probably miss them when they were gone. $10,000.
2) Normal scent detection. The old story. Some things smell nice. Some things smell just terrible. Most things don't smell like much at all. If we couldn't smell, the world would be so much less appetizing, but we eat too much anyway. Also there would be less nostalgia in the world if we couldn't smell but that is OK with me.
Still, it is one of the "major" senses and there are a lot cultural references to it. If I sold my sense of smell, I would get a tear in my eye whenever anybody mentioned roses. $100,00o, some of which I would spend on ammonia to put in water balloons and throw at people who think they are so great because they can still smell.
3) The 4 "traditional" tastes. I do not believe in umami. These are the tastes that happen at your taste buds. I am not sure how much we really ought to appreciate them. Yes everyone likes sweets and salty things now and then but I think that our appreciation of them comes not so much from the taste buds as from some hormonal thing that happens once they are in our intestines. I don't think that should count as a sense. Considered as mere tongue stimulation though I think they are overrated.
Sweets are usually cloying, salty things make my mouth bleed, sour things are refreshing but also painful in large quantities (SCIENCE CORNER -- touch both leads of a battery to your tongue. Ouch!). Bitter things are just nasty.
If you want, we can also include in this category spicy hot, astringent (is this ever desirable in food) and menthol-tasting things. My opinion is the same about all of them: Tasting -- that is, the actual satisfying part of eating -- is a thing that happens mostly in the back of the nose and in the stomach.
Which is not to say that my taste buds are something I would just give away. They lend a lot of context to what we eat. If you have ever made a cake and added lots of vanilla but forgotten to put in the sugar then you were baking the taste equivalent of a William Faulkner novel and were probably just as bemused when you tried to eat it. I would sell my traditional sense of taste for $2 million.
4) Mouthfeel. I am including this here rather than in the "touch" section because that one is going be crowded as it is. Anyway mouthfeel is pretty intimately involved with eating. I get ulcers in my mouth sometimes and have to take benzocaine to relieve the pain.
I realize that the result is not complete numbness of the mouth (more like every surface has an inch of wool on it) but since *complete* loss of feeling in the mouth would be too wrapped up in issues of body awareness. Let's assume that loss of mouthfeel is just like taking too much anaesthetic.
When that happens, it feels like every meal is a meal of socks. $1 million.
5) Nasal tasting. If you have gotten this far you know my opinion. This is where the magic happens. This is basically why people buy cookbooks. Losing this sense would be like having the worst cold in the world. At least without it alcohol wouldn't taste so biting and cough syrup wouldn't taste so acrid. (Question: How is accompanying a drug that offends sense #3 with a syrup that offends senses #4 and 5 a good idea?)
I would want $5 million for this particular sense, enough to drink myself under the table every night of my life ten times over.
6) The whole apparatus. Taste and smell just aren't that important unless you're eating, or thinking about eating. I don't particularly like about 4/5 of what I eat and even less of what I smell, and I get by okay. And as these are particularly useless senses, I probably wouldn't even miss them much after a little while. $20 million to spend on the other three senses.
In general I agree. Smell is not too useful unless you have a job designing perfume which all smells like musk anyway or maybe you are a bloodhound. I'm grouping it with taste here because everyone knows that smell and taste and closely linked (though not as close as everyone thinks). Also both installments would be pretty thin if I did them separately.
1) Pheromone detection. Yes noses do this with a special organ that you can see if you have a flashlight and at least two mirrors and three hands. I have to confess I do not know what the value of pheromones is. I am pretty sure they are a big hoax put out by the perfume companies. Even if they are not I am not sure how well they work. I don't seem to myself like a very pheromonal person. I would probably miss them when they were gone. $10,000.
2) Normal scent detection. The old story. Some things smell nice. Some things smell just terrible. Most things don't smell like much at all. If we couldn't smell, the world would be so much less appetizing, but we eat too much anyway. Also there would be less nostalgia in the world if we couldn't smell but that is OK with me.
Still, it is one of the "major" senses and there are a lot cultural references to it. If I sold my sense of smell, I would get a tear in my eye whenever anybody mentioned roses. $100,00o, some of which I would spend on ammonia to put in water balloons and throw at people who think they are so great because they can still smell.
3) The 4 "traditional" tastes. I do not believe in umami. These are the tastes that happen at your taste buds. I am not sure how much we really ought to appreciate them. Yes everyone likes sweets and salty things now and then but I think that our appreciation of them comes not so much from the taste buds as from some hormonal thing that happens once they are in our intestines. I don't think that should count as a sense. Considered as mere tongue stimulation though I think they are overrated.
Sweets are usually cloying, salty things make my mouth bleed, sour things are refreshing but also painful in large quantities (SCIENCE CORNER -- touch both leads of a battery to your tongue. Ouch!). Bitter things are just nasty.
If you want, we can also include in this category spicy hot, astringent (is this ever desirable in food) and menthol-tasting things. My opinion is the same about all of them: Tasting -- that is, the actual satisfying part of eating -- is a thing that happens mostly in the back of the nose and in the stomach.
Which is not to say that my taste buds are something I would just give away. They lend a lot of context to what we eat. If you have ever made a cake and added lots of vanilla but forgotten to put in the sugar then you were baking the taste equivalent of a William Faulkner novel and were probably just as bemused when you tried to eat it. I would sell my traditional sense of taste for $2 million.
4) Mouthfeel. I am including this here rather than in the "touch" section because that one is going be crowded as it is. Anyway mouthfeel is pretty intimately involved with eating. I get ulcers in my mouth sometimes and have to take benzocaine to relieve the pain.
I realize that the result is not complete numbness of the mouth (more like every surface has an inch of wool on it) but since *complete* loss of feeling in the mouth would be too wrapped up in issues of body awareness. Let's assume that loss of mouthfeel is just like taking too much anaesthetic.
When that happens, it feels like every meal is a meal of socks. $1 million.
5) Nasal tasting. If you have gotten this far you know my opinion. This is where the magic happens. This is basically why people buy cookbooks. Losing this sense would be like having the worst cold in the world. At least without it alcohol wouldn't taste so biting and cough syrup wouldn't taste so acrid. (Question: How is accompanying a drug that offends sense #3 with a syrup that offends senses #4 and 5 a good idea?)
I would want $5 million for this particular sense, enough to drink myself under the table every night of my life ten times over.
6) The whole apparatus. Taste and smell just aren't that important unless you're eating, or thinking about eating. I don't particularly like about 4/5 of what I eat and even less of what I smell, and I get by okay. And as these are particularly useless senses, I probably wouldn't even miss them much after a little while. $20 million to spend on the other three senses.
posted by apk01004 at 12:15 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home